Whether or not to build an addition to your home is one of the most important decisions that you’ll face as a home owner. If you have a growing family or an urgent need for more space, home additions could be exactly what you need. However, big money renovations have their obvious downsides. Here are a few ways to determine if this is the right option for you.
How to Know if Home Additions are Right for You
New Home or Home Addition?
In most cases, home additions are far less expensive than the cumulative costs associated with buying a new house and selling your current one. You have to consider all of the charges and fees that typically come along with such an expense.
Questions to Ask
Dedicate quality time to thinking about your future in that home.
- How much longer are you realistically going to remain there?
- Do you have the time and money to sink into a project of this size?
- Do you really want to move your family away from their work and school?
Return on Investment
Most importantly, will you be able to recover the money you put into the home addition when it’s eventually time to sell? In other words, sometimes renovations are so expensive that you end up selling for much less than the sum of the money you put into and added onto your home.
Market Value
You need to take a hard look at the market conditions in your neighborhood and try to find out if the they’re favorable to an addition.
You will never get your money back if you’re the biggest house in your neighborhood or if the cost of the addition raises your property value higher than the market standard. If it’s too much, all you have to do is scale it back a bit.
Quality of Life
You must also think about the significant (and oftentimes loud) disruption that a construction project of that size will bring to your home. In some cases, kitchen, bathrooms and other facilities may be temporarily out of order and it will be nearly impossible to live there at all.
Mass Disruption
There will be contractors, construction workers and an assembly of other people always running around your property. At some points throughout the process, if the size of the project warrants it, you may even need to move out of your home entirely for a period of time.
These are all factors you need to contemplate when deciding whether or not you should put home additions on your home. There’s nothing worse than going through with it, then later realizing all of its inconveniences.
If you’re giving serious thought about a home addition, make sure you at least reflect on these important factors before making a decisions.
